In the summer around Baghdad it was hot. 120 degrees in the shade. The tar/asphalt on the streets got soft. I'd leave sandal-prints in it crossing the street. At night it was still warm.

In the winter it was COLD during the day. It was COLDER at night.

Sarkis warned my mother and me one hot afternoon to take a coat because winter would start that night. We laughed. Wrong. It did. By the time the outdoor movie was over we were freezing. It got cold and stayed cold -- ice on the irrigation ditches some mornings -- until the day summer returned.

Cold in Baghdad was overcoat cold. But it was cold day and night. Some temperature differential, of course. And, the desert is full of "camel brush" plants which have stinging needles. How camels can eat the stuff I don't know, but it was unpleasant to brush against. Lots of date palm farms. Lots of irrigation and irrigation ditches -- I assume that's all still true.

The people may have changed. I remember seeing mud-brick huts a lot on trips into the desert. Many of them would have an electric powerline running to the inside, a TV on, and a fancy car parked outside. Always, always ruins of those mud huts around with the roof caved in partially, windows crumbled down to almost doorways.

Packs of dogs ran loose in the city. One of them used to escort us partway home every night. All the houses had high walls -- eight, ten footers, I think -- around them with broken glass (real sharp pieces) stuck in the concrete on the top to discourage intruders. In summer everyone slept on the roof -- flat roofs. I used to roller skate on ours. It was floored with an orange-ish tile and had a four foot wall around the perimeter. The stairway went up to the roof. The roof was a lived-in part of the house.

I lived there in the fifties. Long time ago tech-wise.

My father lived in the Persian desert in the forties. In an army tent with a persian rug on the ground (sand). He said one of the pi dogs used to come in when none of them (his tentmates) were around and pee on the rug.

Just idling bits of memory here. sorry. What really does it matter for your story if it's hot or cold?

[This message has been edited by arriki (edited October 21, 2006).]

quote:

---

I’m in the desert at night, three in the morning on a flat, arid plain of Iraq. The dumbest irony in the world is the fact that the desert is cold at night. Heat makes people desperate, justifying most cases of insanity. I always imagine people in the desert clamoring over dunes and delirious with heat exhaustion. The cold means clarity. It means precision and sharpness, because energy cannot be wasted in the cold. What I have to do must require some level of insanity, because there is no other justification for it. Yet, my precision is vital. Can’t make mistakes in taking out my target out here, because there is nowhere to hide. I keep flipping the detonator switch over in my hand, staring out at a starry sky, tiny lights poking through holes in a sheet of night

---

The first sentence does not work for me as a first line. The second sentence is better. (But, "dumber" may not be the right word here; it's not at the same level as the rest of the narrator's reflections.) Then, to establish that this is Iraq, the sentence farther down can be changed from " . . . because there is nowhere to hide." to " . . . because there is nowhere to hide in Irag." Better yet, make that its own sentence: There is nowhere to hide in Iraq. And start a new paragraph after it, I think. Paragraphing is a matter of style that a writer can use in personal and idiosynctratic ways, so you may not like this. I think that this early reflective part is best separated from the narrator's action with the detonator switch.

Okay, so there's my two cents.